


Break Apart, Fall Together

by danehemmings



Series: Kakashi/Obito Drabbles [11]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, I love Kakashi angsting about Obito ig, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:49:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danehemmings/pseuds/danehemmings
Summary: Kakashi gapes up at Obito. Obito, who he thought was dead. Obito, who is clearly alive. Clearly furious with him for not keeping his promise, for not keeping Rin safe. For - failing.Guy snaps him out of his daze, and Kakashi prepares to fight. He wishes-he needs to tell Obito. About all those hours spent kneeling next to his gravestone, sobbing. About - about loving him. About listening to what he said that day, about putting comrades first.





	Break Apart, Fall Together

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I haven't posted in a year wow. Sending everyone love

Kakashi gapes up at Obito. Obito, who he thought was dead. Obito, who is clearly alive. Clearly furious with him for not keeping his promise, for not keeping Rin safe. For - failing.

Guy snaps him out of his daze, and Kakashi prepares to fight. He wishes-he needs to tell Obito. About all those hours spent kneeling next to his gravestone, sobbing. About - about loving him. About listening to what he said that day, about putting comrades first.

Obito doesn’t smile, soft and sweet like he used to. He doesn’t glare at Kakashi with anger and frustration after Kakashi has stolen Rin’s attention, yet again. He glares at Kakashi with such hatred he wouldn’t be surprised if he was incinerated.

He is incinerated. Everything is backwards. Obito is his enemy. Obito never once in all these years cared to come back to Konoha. What is Kakashi supposed to do? He can’t kill the man he loves. He’s going easy on Obito, because he loves him. He’s going easy on Obito, and he’s losing. But what’s it matter?

Naruto, who Kakashi considers the pure embodiment of the best of Minato and Obito, continues to fight on. And why wouldn’t Naruto fight on? He doesn’t know. And if he did, he’d still fight on.

So Kakashi fights on, in Kamui, out of Kamui, wherever he’s needed.

~

When it ends, and Obito gets returned to him, Kakashi can’t quite catch his breath. It’s nothing to do with chakra exhaustion, with fighting on for days on end. Its standing next to Obito, working together, having each other’s backs. Meeting his friend’s eye and seeing- something. Something that isn’t angry and hateful, or jealous, something that just is. Something that could be, maybe. Kakashi lets himself think of a life after the war, with Obito at his side like this, and his breath catches.

~

Obito is snatched away again. They win the war, their whole world shifts and is reborn, but Kakashi feels like the little boy he’d been the first time Obito died. He becomes Konoha’s Hokage, because Naruto needs him to be. He gets his work done. He cries. He closes his eyes and sees the future he dared to hope for when Obito was with him. Sees Obito sitting with him at dinners, sees the two of them walking hand in hand and bathed in moonlight. Sees what he can’t have anymore. 

He never told Obito. He never told anyone. There was no point in it. The first time, it was Rin who was grieving the most. She’d been closest to Obito, they were like family and she was the one who Obito had loved. What did it matter that Kakashi had harboured some secret crush? Rin had lost her best friend. Her brother. Kakashi had always proclaimed he hated Obito, and it would be so, so unfair to make it all about him. But he’d wished, after he killed her, that he had told Rin everything. Maybe she would’ve told him something, anything, about Obito. Maybe Obito had always felt like he was Kakashi’s friend, not just the day he died but always. Stupid, to wonder when he knows its true.  
Guy asked him once, ‘Did you love him?’, but Kakashi couldn’t answer. He’d locked those feelings away, locked all feelings away at that point, and to unlock that secret would’ve destroyed him. Now, the way Guy looks at him, Kakashi figures he knows. He visits that bowlcut lovable idiot in the hospital, and Guy gets tears in his eyes as if Kakashi is the one stuck in a wheelchair. But Guy never mentions Obito, and Kakashi is thankful for it.

The person he should’ve told was Obito. He had every opportunity to do it, the hell with who would’ve heard. His world had been burning away, and it seemed like Obito hated him, but Kakashi still could’ve said it. And then Obito didn’t hate him, maybe never really did, and Kakashi, ever the coward, said nothing. He barely said thank you, didn’t get farther than staring into red eyes before Obito crumbled away.

He deals with the loss in the same way. When he finishes his duties for the day, he goes to slab of stone with Obito’ s name carved into it and he cries. He keeps going, because Obito died for him and he won’t let that be in vain.

~

Every breath is ripped from his chest. He’s heaving, panting, and it hurts, so much. Agony he’s never known, like his insides are glass shards all crashing against each other and continually tearing him apart.

He might remember breaking apart into ashes, whisked away by the wind and seeing a girl’s stern eyes, but it might be a fantasy. A hallucination, brought on by this suffering. He wants to stop breathing - it hurts too much. He thinks he’s crying from the pain, but crying would hurt too, so maybe he’s only crying internally.

His throat is raw, the air he breathes in tastes like poison, pushes the shards if his insides around. They dig deeper, hurt worse, and oh how Obito wants it all to stop.

~

He doesn’t get to fade away, doesn’t get the bliss of unconsciousness. But time passes on. It might only be a minute, maybe its days, maybe it’s nothing and this is simply his hell, but Obito gets the strength to open his eyes, and the light that reaches them doesn’t feel like anything but that.

He blinks up at a neon green sky, and takes another painful breath. He wonders for a moment if he is indeed in hell, and everyone got it wrong with the red skies and flames, but then it comes flooding back to him. Saving Naruto and Kakashi, dying. Rin yelling at him and pushing him, feeling like he’s falling and then. This. 

He lifts a hand- it hurts and the movement is jerky, as if he’s never done it before. But it moves. He feels his own face, the familiar scars on one side but more importantly two eyes. Eyes Naruto gave to him. Eyes that can take him out of this realm, if he has the strength. He thinks maybe he does. His glass shards are starting to mold together, and breathing is easier.  
He closes his eyes again. He did the right thing in the end, he knows it, but that doesn’t mean he’d get a warm welcome from Konoha. He doesn’t deserve a warm welcome, not really, and he could go somewhere else and hide away. Except that- well. Kakashi was in Konoha, and when they’d been fighting, side by side once again, Obito had felt. He’d felt nothing but hatred for a long time, and it blocked everything else out until Naruto took that hate away. He didn’t know what it was. Rin had, he was sure that was why she wouldn’t welcome him into the afterlife. He still had more to give. To Kakashi, maybe.

~

It still takes awhile for him to muster the courage to sit up, to stand, to activate his sharingan and disappear from this awful place. Hours pass, he’s sure of it, but the sky remains the same. The ground beneath his feet, too warm and pink. When he does leave its with a sigh of relief. 

He reappears maybe a mile from Konoha’s walls, looks up to the blue sky with a smile. A couple of shaky breaths and then he’s running for the gates.

 

~

Kakashi has turned down Naruto’s invitation to dinner for the third time that week. The guilt at saying no, at letting his team down, its festering. He won’t be able to say no the next time. But he needs to stand next to Obito’s grave, to be as close to Obito as he can be. This is the day he lost Obito the first time, all those years ago. Kakashi, Minato, Rin and Kushina would all come and have a picnic, laugh and cry and remember. Kakashi keeps the tradition, even though he’s here everyday anyways. He brings a picnic basket, the same old one they used to use when Obito was alive, for team bonding or snacks while training.

He feels stupid, sitting alone by a grave, eating a tuna sandwich out in the open with his mask down. But tradition is tradition.

And then a presence is behind him, and a voice that sounds like it hasn’t been used in months says “You’re having a picnic?”

Kakashi turns around and sees Obito, just as he’d last seen him. White haired and red eyed. No shoes, no shirt, but a smile on his face. It’s the same one he used to have, when he and Kakashi didn’t spend the day fighting. Soft and kind and open. Kakashi drops his tuna sandwich. 

I love you. The the words fight to stay in, and so Kakashi whispers it, “I love you”.

That something is in Obito’s eyes, “Slow down, tuna breath.” He pulls Kakashi into a hug and its their first one. They used to never touch at all, aside from throwing punches. Kakashi holds onto Obito, tries to pull him as close as possible, because he’s never letting this man slip away again.

~

Obito breathes, and buries his face into Kakashi’s neck. Wonders why they’ve never once hugged before this. Wonders why he never wanted to. Stupid. No wonder Rin was always pestering him about Kakashi- it wasn’t for her, it was for him. No wonder she pushed him back into this life. He’s been so stupid. He’s been stupid all his life.

“Hey, tuna breath,” He whispers it like he’s telling Kakashi a secret.

Kakashi pulls away, tears in his eyes. Obito kisses him, feels stupider for not having done this before, either.

“I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> (sorry if the changing POV was confusing)


End file.
